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What changed on screen
What changed on screen, title by title: 20 in total. Tap a cover to open it. Titles you haven't marked as read stay locked so nothing gets spoiled.
- Referencenod to comics or other movies
- Cameoa familiar face shows up
- Setupplanted now, pays off later
- Behind the scenesproduction trivia
- Behind the scenesTwelve years earlier
The book is set 12 years before The Golden Compass. Its hero, Malcolm Polstead, is 11 and helps run his parents' inn near Oxford.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesA seventeen-year wait
It came out on October 19, 2017, 17 years after The Amber Spyglass.
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- ChangeThe movie stops short
The movie ends before the book's last three chapters. Asriel's bridge and Roger's fate were saved for a sequel that never came. The HBO series films all of it at the end of S1.
source ↗ - ChangeIofur became Ragnar
In the movie, the bear king Iofur Raknison is renamed Ragnar Sturlusson so he isn't confused with Iorek. The order changes too: Lyra reaches Svalbard before Bolvangar.
source ↗ - ChangeBilly and Tony merge
In the book, the boy found without his daemon in a northern village is Tony Makarios, and Billy Costa escapes Bolvangar. The series folds both into Billy, who gets Tony's daemon, Ratter.
source ↗ - ChangeOur world arrives early
The book never leaves Lyra and her world. The series already shows a boy from our world, Will Parry, in S1, though in print he doesn't appear until the next volume.
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- ChangeA different death for John Parry
In the book, John Parry is killed by an arrow from Juta Kamainen, a witch he once spurned. In the series, he turns Will around and takes a bullet meant for his son.
source ↗ - ChangeLee's last stand got smaller
In the book, Lee's last fight comes with a burning forest and a storm, and he takes down every soldier. The series stages a much smaller version.
source ↗ - ChangeThe Skraeling ring is gone
The series drops how Lee took a ring from a dead Skraeling. Without it, Hester's guilt over telling him to use the ring makes less sense.
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- ChangeOgunwe is no longer a king
In the book, Ogunwe is an African king who joins Asriel. The series makes him an army commander.
source ↗ - ChangeMore Asriel, less battle
Lord Asriel gets a bigger role in S3. The final battle against Heaven, though, plays out without some of the characters who fight in it on the page, and several fights were cut.
source ↗ - ChangeA stripped-down Land of the Dead
The series goes for a stripped-down Land of the Dead, with washed-out ghosts and cliffs of old belongings. The mulefa move differently too, gliding like speed skaters.
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- ReferenceA 17th-century title
Pullman took the title from a 17th-century book by Scottish minister Robert Kirk about country people's encounters with supernatural beings.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesReal people's names
Three characters are named after real people. One of them, Nur Huda el-Wahabi, died in London's Grenfell Tower fire in 2017.
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- ReferenceA field from the first book
The field in the title is a field in the physics sense, like a magnetic field. It first shows up in The Golden Compass under another name: the Rusakov Field.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesWritten on a computer
Pullman wrote by hand for more than 50 years but did this one on a computer because of pain in his hand. He said the pandemic and his age made it a hard book to write.
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- Behind the scenesA map and a postcard
Besides the story Lyra and the Birds, the little book includes a fold-out map of Oxford, pages from a travel guide to Lyra's world and a postcard from Mary Malone.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesLyra at 15
The story takes place two years after the trilogy, with Lyra at 15, between Jordan College and the Oxford Canal.
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- Behind the scenesThe balloon came from poker
Lee Scoresby is 24 and has just won his balloon in a poker game. This is where he meets Iorek Byrnison.
source ↗ - ReferenceThe show's Lee comes from here
The HBO series borrowed some of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Lee from this book, like the card playing and the bar fight.
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